How weeds lead and why we follow 

Two years ago this coming weekend CERES farmer Emily Connors (that’s Em with her marriage equality rainbow chard above) started selling a few bunches of  produce from a table at Joe’s Market Garden.  We’d been talking about setting up a farm gate just like farmer Joe Garita had done many years before but nothing was nailed down.  But as is her way Em just went ahead and started, casually mentioning she’d opened the farm gate one day while she was dropping off produce at the Fair Food warehouse.  

Without fanfare Em had just put a sign up and set her veg out for sale on her sorting table.  It was something I kept in mind this week speaking to a group in Shepparton planning to begin their own urban farm. The project, in it’s very embryonic stages consists of a small steering group, a bare 10 acre paddock and a landscape plan.  For some such a big open space and the prospect of a long uncharted collective journey is a scary, even paralysing prospect. The question is always, “Where do we start?”

But no doubt they will find among their number their own Emily, that person hardwired like an acacia to germinate on bare land. Someone who just goes ahead and grows untended, who makes ground fertile and provides shelter for those who come after her.  This is the way plant communities succeed each other and so it is with human ones; first it’s the weeds, the brambles, the pioneer trees getting the ground right for the forest to follow.

Meanwhile, back at Joe’s Farm Gate this weekend’s two year birthday will be celebrated beside the farm shed in usual earthy style. All are welcome and besides the bunches of produce picked that morning, there”ll be live music courtesy of Imogen Pemberton, a fire to warm cold hands, hot drinks and maybe even a visit from some members of farmer Joe Garita’s family who have come back to the garden since Emily germinated the farm gate.

You can find info about Joe’s Market Garden and the Saturday farm gate here.